Properties, Standards & Criteria

by Mike Ossipoff

To write to Mike write nkklrp before the "@" sign, and then write hotmail.com after the "@" sign.

INTRODUCTION:

Single winner vsoting systems are for choosing 1 alternative from
among several. Typically, in partisan elections, the 1-Vote
Plurality (First Past The Post, or FPTP) is used. People vote
for 1 alternative or candidate, and the one with most votes wins.
Other methods are proposed as improvements.

Various different single-winner methods are proposed as improvements.
There's little or no consensus on standards for evaluating them.
Defining some of those standards & criteria, and telling how
the methods do by them, with initial special attention to a few
of the best methods, is the purpose of these articles.

Why are single-winner methods important? What government does,
what it allows or doesn't allow, those things affect every
material aspect of our world. Even a bird in a tree in the most
remote forest is affected by that. So it becomes important how
public wishes translate to government policy--typically, but
not necessarily, via the election of candidates for office, and
by voting by those candidates in their legislatures.

What's wrong with the Plurality method? The lesser-of-2-evils
problem. Voters know that if they vote for their favorite, that
will often prevent them from being able to help a more winnable
compromise (the "lesser-evil"), who may be the only candidate who
could beat someone whom they despise more. So they have to
completely abandon their favorite. I believe that most agree that
that is the main problem that dramatizes why we need better
single-winner voting systems. Many of the criteria that I describe
later are for measuring compliance with that standard.